MOSCOW, January 19. /TASS/. Russian State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin has said that the European Union (EU) should impose sanctions on Kiev for disrupting the implementation of the Minsk Agreements.
"I want to believe that the positions of France and Germany, which, by the way, presides in OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] this year, will become constructive and objective, and that supporters of anti-Russian restrictions will understand that, following their own logic, they should impose sanctions not on Russia but on official Kiev and its leaders for flagrant violations of deadlines and requirements of the Minsk Agreements," Naryshkin told a lower house session on Tuesday. He noted that strange things continue to happen around the intra-Ukrainian crisis which President Vladimir Putin described as the "theatre of the absurd."
Naryshkin reminded that last year Russia accepted the largest number of migrants, according to UN estimates. "More than a million Ukrainian citizens fled to our territory, fled from death, poverty, arbitrariness of the authorities, and the reason for that is the criminal activities of the Kiev regime," he stressed.
"Its messengers in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe [PACE], instead of worrying about the real problems of their country and their people, make up new false reasons and prerequisites to justify the shameless restrictions imposed on our delegation in this organization," the Duma speaker noted.
PACE’s winter session will take place in Strasbourg on 25-29 January 2016. Russian State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin said on Monday that the Russian delegation will not take part in the January session.
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'Foreign leaders have overdone in their attempts to weaken Russia'
Foreign leaders have overdone in their vain attempts to weaken Russia, State Duma Speaker went on to say.
"We see that external pressure — both economic and propagandistic pressure on Russia — continues. However, foreign leaders have obviously overdone in their attempts to weaken us," Naryshkin told a lower house session.
"They are already undermining the foundations of welfare of the whole Western world. Their analysts forecast, for instance, considerable deterioration of cooperation between EU and US. The United Kingdom, while preparing for a referendum on its future membership in EU, put forward several demands to official Brussels which can critically change the character of this integration project, for example, by returning some powers to national parliaments of EU member countries that were earlier transferred to different structures," the Duma speaker said.
At the same time, the number of global challenges only grows, and the future of the world directly depends on coordinated efforts of several countries in the fight against international terrorism, he added. "We still call for all civilized countries to unite for restoring peace, security and stability in the Middle East and North Africa," Naryshkin said.